April 13, 2008

I have a bit of progress to report this week. In order to appreciate this, you need to realize that so far, after contacting dozens of literary agents, I haven't been able to find a single one who is interested in even seeing my book. Most of them don't give me any feedback. Those who do typically say something like, "This is a Jewish book, and Jewish books never sell more that 20,000 copies, and I can't make any money on that."

I respond by saying, "Yes this is a Jewish book, and it is also more. It can reach millions of people, people from any background who are moved by stories of the spiritual journey, and the relationship between student and spiritual teacher, and San Francisco in the 1960s, and friendship." They respond with silence.

So here's the story (for now I'm disguising the names). A couple of weeks ago, as I was going through Writers Market online looking for yet another another agent to contact, I found one who caught my eye. Dan has had a long career in both films and publishing, has represented a number of fameous people, wants 50% of the authors he represents now to be first time authors, and likes to represent inspirational memoirs. But what really caught my eye was that one of the authors he is representing, Larry, was one of my graduate school college instructors from over 30 years ago. The crazy thing is, Larry actually appears in a chapter of my book!

So I sent Dan a query note mentioning Larry. Normally my query notes don't get answered very quickly. Within an hour Dan had sent a note to Larry, cc'd to me, saying, "Who is this guy?" Within another hour there was a note from Larry to Dan, cc'd to me. I lucked out. Not only did Larry remember me, he had some very nice things to say.

Dan then sent a note asking me to send him the entire manuscript, saying that he would read it. Larry sent me a note separately saying that Dan is so good at what he does that, if he likes my book, it will surely get published.

So Dan is now reading the manuscript, and I'm trying not to check my email too frequently.

March 30, 2008

Nothing to report this week in the way of progress on the book. I'm reorganizing my life because I have to, in order to focus on growing my business -- a high priority at this point. Since I haven't yet discovered how to add more hours to the day, this makes it a challenge to also spend time every day on the Holy Beggars. I do have a plan. One thing I've learned in writing this book: plans are easy to make, but habits are very hard to change. This week I'll work on changing some habits, and see what happens.

A piece of news: Neshama Carlebach is involved in producing a new musical called Shlomo, A New Musical. It looks like they've assembled a good team and are making good progress, with a "pre-Broadway limited engagement, April 22 - May 9."

March 23, 2008

Boaz Shahak's film, You Never Know, played at the JCC in Berkeley on March 13. About 100 people came to see it. I was there with Wendy and some friends, and moderated the discussion afterwards.

One of my big surprises and delights was seeing Natalie and Yosepha Zarchin, both of whom were at the House of Love and Prayer in the earliest days. The last time I had seen them was at the memorial at my house in El Granada for Shlomo just after he passed away in October, 1994. Those of us who were friends in the early days of the House in 1968-9 shared the amazing adventure of living in God's presence every second, of living on miracles. We shared hugs and memories. My experience has been that whenever any of us get together, no matter how many years have passed since we've seen each other, it's as though no time has passed at all. The love and memories, of Shlomo and the House and each other, and God's presence at the center of it all, are eternal.

Natalie, who is now in her mid-80s, lives in the East Bay and is still an active artist. Yosepha is a nurse who delivers babies at Stanford Hospital.

Another person I saw there was Edith Heda, whose daughter is Shulamis Green in Jerusalem. Although Edith herself wasn't so much at the House, it was great to talk with her and share memories of Shulamis, Stephanie in those days.

At the start of the discussion, I asked the audience, "How many of you ever lived at the House of Love and Prayer?" About three people stood up.

Then I asked, "How many of you ever went to the House?" About 15 more joined them.

Then I asked, "How many of you ever heard Shlomo sing and teach in person?" About 40 more stood and joined them.

Then I asked, "How many of you have been inspired in your life by Shlomo's music and teaching?" Almost the entire room was standing.

The discussion that followed took on the quality of a family reunion, with people sharing their personal stories with great feeling, and rest of us listening with open hearts.

I hope that Boaz's film finds a good audience in this country as it has in Israel. And I hope that when my book is out I'll be able to do a book tour which will become an occasion, as this film screening was, for many people to connect from the heart.

March 9, 2008

The film about Reb Shlomo, You Never Know, by young Israeli film maker Boaz Shahak, is making its U.S. debut this Thursday in Berkeley at the JCC East Bay.

"The film features no external narration, a feat of great courage for such a young filmmaker. Neither does he distract the viewer with subtitles of the names of the interviewees, who are all, instead, listed at the end of the film. This helps transform the film from documentary to art, and adds to a feeling that we are experiencing it in real time." Toby Klein Greenwald (GoJerusalem, Dec. 12)

I am one of the four main narrators in the film, and will be moderating a discussion afterward.

I met Boaz when he came to the U.S. in 2005. He came to the Bay Area twice to film me, the second time with his camera person. He asked me to take them around San Francisco so we went to all kinds of places: to the locations of the first House of Love and Prayer and the second one, to Haight Street (very different in 2005 from 1965), to Stowe Lake in Golden Gate Park where we all jumped in (men on one side of the bridge and women on the other) with Reb Shlomo for a mikveh at dawn on Shavuot in 1969, and the San Francisco Marina with it's imposing view, from the bottom up, of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I was very impressed with this young religious Israeli, his sincerity, his idealism and optimism, his humility, his dedication to telling Reb Shlomo's story. There is more to tell about our time together and perhaps I will go into it in a future post.

In all honesty I have mixed feelings about the film. On the one hand, the part of my story that Boaz has chosen to show is the 10% where I talk about my Haight Street, hippie days, rather than the 90% where I talk about Reb Shlomo and the House of Love and Prayer. As my son Adam says, he was really interviewing my "inner hippie!" On the other hand, the film as a whole, as the above reviewer conveys, was done with great daring and great artistry, and is worth viewing both for the mood and spirit it evokes about Reb Shlomo, and for its approach to the art of the documentary.

For me, I see moderating the discussion afterwards as a kind of warm up for my book tour which with God's help will come in the not too distant future.

February 24, 2008

This past week I've had to deal with a big distraction in my business, the HR Forums. The web site server, which is hosted in Half Moon Bay where I live, was damaged as the result of power surges in a storm, and the backup system also failed. Bottom line, a big chunk of my web site was lost. I've been in emergency mode for the last few days, working on rebuilding my business web site, so I haven't made much progress on the book.

This is a big reminder of my spiritual agenda for this year, which came to me recently as a vision while doing the Inner Elder Exercise, which I learned from Rabbi Shaya Isenberg eight years ago. There are four values which it is my task to balance right now: business, art, spirit, and service. I hope to keep to keep moving the book ahead quickly, while also taking care of business.

One small piece of progress: a business colleague accidentally found his way to the Holy Beggars web site, is very intrigued with the book, and is interested in helping with the technology for the online Events.

February 17. 2008

The news of this past week is, the web site is now updated. This includes:

• The Summary of Chapters is now complete to reflect the latest version of the manuscript.
• There are now excerpts from six chapters.
• I've updated the connection to House Online to provide a little more simplicity and clarity, and hopefully encourage more people to join. And two more people, Steven Maimes and Lorenzo, have joined. Steven has added some great photos, and the House Online slide show is looking good!
• There is a new Events page which will provide information and updates about on-line events which I hope to initiate in the coming months, and the book tour when it happens with God's help.

In the coming weeks I expect to be turning my attention to reaching out -- to friends and advisors, potential endorsers, and potential agents and publishers. I'm especially interested at this point in potential endorsers. The ideal person is a well known author and/or spiritual leader, including people from a variety of backgrounds and faiths: Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Sufi, Buddhist, Hindu, New Age, etc. If you know of anyone who might be good, please let me know!

February 10, 2008

On Tuesday, February 6 I completed a big phase of of this journey -- the second draft of the book. Now the writing and my part of the editing is done. It has taken me 10 years to get here, and a chapter of my life is now complete. I give thanks to the Creator for sustaining me and bringing me to to this time!

The single most difficult part was Chapter 29. It took a long time to prepare myself to tell this part of the story. I'm grateful to my friends Lynn Feinerman, Reuven Goldfarb, Rabbi Nadya Gross and Rabbi Victor Gross, and to my wife Wendy Berk, for their voices, their memories, their feelings, and their wisdom.

The next big task is to find a publisher. I got my feet wet on this one last year as I received my first 30 rejection slips, and acquired a healthy appreciation of the size of the challenge. I've dreamed of getting Holy Beggars out to the world in 2008, the 40th anniversary of the founding of the House of Love and Prayer. I expect more rejection slips in the months to come, and hopefully one acceptance from a publisher with the vision and the means for seizing this opportunity. I will also investigate self publishing, and want to make a decision by June to go one way or the other. The hour is getting late for bringing the book out this year. I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and we'll see what happens.

Rejection - Jewish Lights

April 19, 2007

We regret that we must reply by form letter, but we have received so many submissions that it is not possible to reply to each of them individually. We hope that you will understand the problems involved in being a small publishing house.

We will not be able to take advantage of the opportunity to publish your work. In addition to considering the merits of each work, we must also consider it in competition with all of the other materials submitted to us. As we only publish about 25 new books each year, the competition is intense and the decisions are difficult...

Very truly yours,
Stuart M. Matlins
President & Publisher

March 25, 2007

News on the publisher front: My latest rejection letter is from Shambala Publications. It looks like a copy of a copy, not quite centered on the page, as though the original had been misaligned in the copier. There is no date and it starts off "Dear Author." I mailed the proposal on March 19 from Half Moon Bay, California, to Shambala's office in Boston. The postmark date on their envelope they sent to me is March 21. They must have sent out their response the same day the proposal arrived. Now that's efficiency! I imagine a bin for all unsolicited manuscripts. A fast computer scans them for return addresses, and then prints up an envelope, into which a copy of the rejection form letter is automatically inserted...

On the social network front: "Stories from the House" on the Holy Beggars web site now has 11 members, and people are gradually starting to post things about themselves. I get very excited each time someone joins, and each time someone posts something. This has great promise for fulfilling one part of my dream for the book -- the opportunity for everyone's story to be included.

March 11, 2007

I've been using most of my book time during the past week to work on the Holy Beggars web site. The exciting news is, I've created a social network; a kind of MySpace for the holy beggars of the House of Love and Prayer. The technology, from Ning, allowed me to single handedly put it together.

For a week I got obsessed with the possibilities of what I could do with this kind of on-line community. One of my challenges in writing the book has been how do deal with two conflicting values I am holding. On the one hand, I want to honor all my brothers and sisters who were involved at the House, and create a space for their stories. On the other hand, if I were really to do that, the book would be way too long and rambling for anyone to want to publish it or read it -- and my mission is to get this story out to as many people as possible.

The solution: keep the book skinny and the story tightly focused. Then create an on-line community, "Stories from the House," as a place where anyone who was there can post their story. Putting this together in the form of a social network feels very liberating. I have stories from quite a few people that I've collected over the years. I'll post some of them, invite as many as possible of my friends from those days to join, encourage them to share their stories, and then leave the rest up to them.

I'll keep working at this, keep encouraging people, and see what happens.

Today I was excited to have the first member, besides my wife Wendy and me, join the on-line community. It's my friend Donna Maimes, whom I rarely see these days but is very supportive of the book. That made me feel good.

In the mean time, I'm working on getting more endorsements from well known writers on spirituality. And this week I hope to get back to the main task for these days: knocking on the doors of agents and publishers.

March 2, 2007

Yesterday I crashed.

Over the past month I've been pushing myself very hard, trying to make as much progress as I can on both the book and my business, the HR Forums. And of course there's the rest of my life that I try to stay present for and current with, things like my marriage, friends, spiritual community and family.

Do you ever get caught in an updraft of activity where something's very important, you're excited, you jump in all the way, the adrenaline is flowing, and you feel -- wow, this is great, I'm really making stuff happen!!? That's how I've felt the last couple of weeks. The thing is, it's extreme, it's unsustainable. It's like a speculative frenzy in the stock market, it can only go so far, until one day some bad news arrives that triggers the crash.

My bad news yesterday was an email from the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. It was a form note, boilerplate, sent by Jim Greenberg's assistant:

Dear Author:

Thank you very much for your query. However, at this time we don’t feel that our agency could represent this work successfully.

Remember that this is a very subjective business, and we wish you the best of luck on your quest for publication. Please feel free to send us any additional projects you may have in the future.

I checked on the web site for who wrote this. She's about 25 years old and "loves all things related to feminism, beads, and black licorice."

It's not like I'm not expecting rejection notes. In fact, I've half seriously set myself a goal of collecting at least 100. I ought to collect them all and post them on my web site. But when I read this, I just crashed. It's like someone turned off a switch inside me. I became like a zombie, totally disfunctional, complete depression. I had a meeting I was supposed to be at, but I didn't go. Instead I took a walk near the beach, looked out at the skyful of stormy clouds reflecting the sunset colors, and let my mind spin like a giant flock of seagulls in crazy circles.

Holy Beggars is the story of 40 years of my life, the lives of dear friends, and I believe an important chapter of both Jewish history and spirituality in America. It's about the heart and soul of my journey in this world. Up until now, having a manuscript and working to get it published has beeh fun, like a game that's challenging, but where you know there's a happy ending.

Now the game has become rough. What if no one wants to represent the book, and no one wants to publish it, and no one wants to read it? I've never had this thought before.

Do I really have the toughness and faith to keep believing, to keep going forward, to stay joyful and positive no matter what?

March 1, 2007

As of this morning I still hadn't heard back from the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, after contacting them a month ago via their web site with my book proposal formatted according to their specifications, and following up by phone and email two weeks ago. So I decided to phone them again.

On the web site it says not to try to reach a particular agent. So when I got the voice mail tree for their system, I chose "general mailbox." The message there had a cheerful woman's voice which said:

Our office is closed for the holidays. We will be returning on January 2. Happy Holidays!

Okay, I thought, time to break the rules. I called again and managed to get through to one of the principals, Jim Levine. I could tell he was busy and in the middle of stuff, somewhere up there on the 27th floor in his office on 7th Avenue in Manhattan.

"Sorry to interrupt you," I said, "but I got the impression that no one was paying attention to your voicemail box." He was very appologetic and said that if I re-sent everything to him, he would route it to someone in his agency, and make sure they got back to me next week. That commitment, which sounded sincere, actually made me feel a lot better.

My thinking and language in the book proposal keeps evolving, and the version I had sent a month ago looked sadly out of date. So first I spent an hour revising and polishing the proposal; then I sent it.

As a former New Yorker and current citizen of the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm always paying attention to how much California sunshine I want to use in a situation, and how much New York elbows. Today's lesson -- lead with California sunshine, try to treat everyone with respect the way they want to be treated. But when you're not getting their attention, consider breaking the rules.

February 26, 2007

I got a another rejection note yesterday, by email, from yet another literary agent. It came while Wendy and I were watching the Oscars. Ellen DeGeneres was talking on the the screen about honoring all the nominees, not just the winners. Then she made a bunch of jokes about pretending it wasn't all about winning, when it really was. The note I received said:

Thank you so much for contacting me. I read through your website and I think you have a very valid book. I'm just afraid that I don't think I can be helpful. I think that this is a book that will probably work best and be of most interest to a smaller house and that simply isn't my area of expertise.

I wish you the best,
Alice

On the one hand, it's very nicely stated, and Alice sounds like a nice person. But what do you mean, "of most interest to a smaller house?!!" That's what people keep telling me. Be realistic, this is your first book, you haven't paid your dues yet, you haven't established a name for yourself, be modest in your expectations, don't aim too high, self publish. Yeah, yeah, they're all right, but what about my dream, of getting this story to millions of people? How am I supposed to keep the dream alive without becoming delusional?

I felt a little like those losers in the Oscar ceremony. Yeah, I got treated respectfully, and that's nice. But what I really want is to get the book out.

The thing is, as a spiritual person, I know it's in God's hands anyway. So what I have to do is to do what I can each day to get the story out to millions of people. Then let go and turn it over.

February 25, 2007

Last week I learned from a friend that filmmaker Menachem Daum is getting started on a new documentary, on the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Since Reb Shlomo figures so prominently my book, this is a very interesting development.

I first met Menachem when he was in San Francisco in 1997 for a showing of his film, "A Life Apart," at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. After seeing the film I went up to him and told him how much I enjoyed it. We got to talking, and I wound up driving him back to his hotel.

We talked about Reb Shlomo, who was his spiritual teacher as well as mine. Shlomo passed away in 1994. Menachem said he hoped to make a film about Shlomo's life someday. The biggest challenge from his point of view was how to deal with some of the controversy that was part of Shlomo's life. At that time I had begun writing Holy Beggars and was facing the same set of issues: how to tell the story of this extraordinary human being -- whom we loved, who had been our teacher, and who had made such a profound impact on the lives of so many people -- but who was also complex , and whose life seemed to contain fierce contradictions.

I dropped Menachem off at his hotel, and haven't seen him since then. In 2005 he came out with his next film, "Hiding and Seeking," which was shown on PBS and received an Emmy® nomination.

What is so moving to me about these two films, and I believe so profound, is the loving and wise sensitivity with they treat a complex set of human issues. It has to do with the tension between two realities: the reality of the world as experienced by many fundamentalist Jews living in ultra-Orthodox communities -- a world into which Menachem Daum was born -- and the reality of the more diverse, secular, inclusive and chaotic world that most of us in the West inhabit. His genius as an artist is the way he is able to bridge these worlds.

It seems to me that at this time in history, we need more people like Menachem Daum, people from within the core of many faiths, who are capable of building these kinds of bridges.

Anyway, when I found out that Menachem was moving ahead with his film about Reb Shlomo, I called him. It turns out that I'm going to be in New York next month, to attend the senior recital of my son Adam, who is a musician in the Jazz Program at New School in New York. "What if you do some video of interviewing me about the House of Love and Prayer?" I said. "You can use it as part of your film, and I can use clips to post on the Holy Beggars web site." He liked the idea, so we decided to do it.

After the conversation, I looked again at Menachem's proposal for his film. Here's a part of it:

Shlomo often acknowledged that he was a man of many contradictions. As a result, throughout his life he was constantly at war with himself. Among his internal struggles was his attempt to reconcile his religious fundamentalism with his increasing humanism and egalitarianism. On the one hand, he was deeply rooted in a Judeo-centric, parochial Orthodox Judaism that emphasized Jewish chosenness. Yet, Shlomo had to break through these barriers as he increasingly felt deeply connected to every single human being. Throughout his life Shlomo constantly wrestled against boundaries for the sake of his art and for his sense of connectedness to all humanity. Like most of us, Shlomo’s strengths and weaknesses came from the same place within himself and he experienced his share of personal triumphs and failures. Give Us Harmony will present an admiring but honest portrait of a lonely and pained man who, while trying to save the world, found it increasingly difficult to save himself.

I am looking forward to seeing Menachem Daum next month. I am looking forward to talking with him, on camera and off, about some of our shared experiences and concerns. I am honored that he is willing to spend time with me as an informal collaborator and friend. I hope our conversations will also have value for him.

February 21, 2007

Yesterday I spoke with Estelle Frankel, author of Sacred Therapy.

I first met Estelle when she came to the House of Love and Prayer when I was running the House sometime around 1969. In the 38 years since then we've stayed in touch from time to time. Besides her therapy classes, Estelle is active as a teacher, workshop leader and service leader in Jewish Renewal communities in the Bay Area.

I asked for her advice on getting published. She suggested I contact people we both know in the Jewish world who are involved with writing and publishing, and referred me to an email list of new Jewish authors. She said that she didn't find giving talks in book stores to be particularly rewarding. Her favorite place to give talks has been synagogues, where she can reach a larger audience, and people come with more openness to a spiritual discussion.

We talked about what it's like writing from a Jewish experience and Jewish spiritual perspective, with the intention of getting your message out to a more general audience. She confirmed what I heard from Wayne last week: that books focused on readers within the Jewish world usually sell less than 10,000 copies. "My book is a crossover book," she said. She has been successful in reaching a larger, more general audience and selling more books. Still she cautioned me, unless you're one of the very, very few that get national attention and wind up on shows with people like Terry Gross or Oprah (which doesn't seem much more likely than winning the lottery), don't expect to make any money. The amount you make on royalties is very meager.

I wonder about the whole issue of "crossing over." For Jews, the idea of crossing over is part of our story. The word Hebrew, Ivri, means "one who crosses over."

There's also something quintessentially American about this notion. We're a nation of immigrants, most of us rooted in some way in the world or worlds of our ethnic origins, of our great grandparents, and all of us have to make decisions about how we identify ourselves. Where am I on the continuum? How much am I a Jew, or a Christian, or Muslim, or African American, or Irish or German, or Mexican or Cuban, or Chinese or Indian -- and how much am I an American? How much do I share my intimate experience with others outside of my particular tribe (liberal, conservative, San Francisco or LA or New York, Midwest, South, sports world, book lovers, tech world, agriculture, construction trades, etc.)? How interested am I really in listening to the messages and stories from others outside my tribe, whose lives, viewpoints and opinions are very different from mine?

The world of the Internet and the global network of communications media presents a huge paradox for crossing over. On the one hand, hundreds of millions of us on this planet are becoming increasingly interconnected in ways we couldn't possibly have imagined a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, our communities of shared experience are getting fragmented at a furious pace. When I grew up in the 50's there were three TV channels and one "Top 40 Hit Parade." Now there are so many TV channels and so many worlds of popular music that most of us of my generation can't keep track. Armed with the latest digital technology, we can each create our own news feeds, or music shows, our own virtual video networks, or on-line virtual communities. All of this was dramatically symbolized by Time Magazine's December 2006 "Person of the Year: You" lead article.

So in American culture today, where is the new town square, the village commons, the place where we can cross over to actually connect with people different from ourselves? This is something I continue to ponder.

Journey's Next Step

For me, the second step of a journey is usually harder than the first. Taking the first step I get excited; I've started something new. The second step means, okay, now I've got to follow through and keep going. Am I really ready to blog from now until the book gets out to the world? I don't know; we'll see.

Today it was time to follow up on contacts I've already made. One of them was Jewish Lights Publishing. I sent them a book proposal last month, 50 pages of paper by snail mail, with the content and format they specified. They seem like a good potential publisher for me because they say their intention is to bring primarily Jewish books to "people of all faiths and backgrounds [who] yearn for books that attract engage, educate and spiritually inspire." That's the intended audience for Holy Beggars.

Since I had sent out the proposal a month ago, I figured that this would be a good time to follow up and see how it's going. Right? It seemed like a good idea until I took another look at their web site, where it said, "After sending your material, please allow approximately three to six months for a reply." Yikes! What are they going to do with it for six months? Do they expect me to wait around for a reply?

Well, moving right along, I decided to follow up with a literary agent in New York, Levine Greenberg. I also sent them a proposal last month. I like their process better, because they ask for your stuff on-line, which I find much faster and easier and seems designed to provide faster turn around. I double checked their web site to find out how they feel about authors following up, and came up with this ambiguous statement: "We will let you know within two weeks if we would like more information about your project." Does this mean they will contact you within two weeks, or that they'll contact you only if they would like more information? If they don't want more information, what does that mean? I decided to call them anyway. Since their policy is for authors not to try to contact specific agents, my only choice was to leave a voice mail in the "general mailbox."

The thing that's taking me a while to fathom is that the literary agents, at least those with any kind of track record of getting books published, seem as hard to contact as the publishers. Go figure! I thought that when they took a look at my manuscript, maybe they'd be discerning enough to see how great it is, and maybe they'd actually want to represent me. I thought that maybe my biggest problem would be sorting through the promises that each would make me, and deciding whom to believe, and which one to trust with the success of my valuable property.

The good news is, that's one problem that so far I don't have.

My Journey Begins

Last week I spoke to my friend Rabbi Wayne Dosick who is a published author. I called him, as I've called other friends who have published books, to ask for advice on getting out my first book, Holy Beggars: A Journey from Haight Street to Jerusalem. What do you do if you're on a mission to get your story out to as many people as you can, but this is your first book and no one in the publishing world has ever heard of you?

Wayne said, "The publishing world today is completely different from what it was 10 or 15 years ago. It has totally transformed."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"It's all about the Internet," he said. Basically that means that everyone in the world is potentially an author. The number of people who are publishing, or attempting to publish, or hope to publish, or blogging, and self publishing electronically in some other form, has exploded.

On the other side of the equiation, there has been a huge global consolidation in the publishing industry. "There are now only seven important publishers in the world," he said. "Most book labels are either subsidiaries or imprints of these seven."

What was particularly depressing was that Wayne, even though he has published several books, is now having to work harder getting publishers to pay attention. He said the market for spriitual books that existed a decade ago has also changed. If you are writing specifically for the Christian Evangelical market you can reach a huge audience. If you are writing for Orthodox Jews, you can reach a smaller but still significant audience. But if you want to reach a group that crosses religious lines, such as spiritual seekers from diverse backgrounds, he said that the market is no longer there.

"Why?" I said.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe people have drawn inward. Maybe they're less interested in the universal, and more interested in their particular tribe."

I am left to ponder what this all means for me, and what it says about the world.

Later in the day an idea strikes me. I'll start a blog to keep track of my efforts to get my book out to the world. Maybe others will be interested and want to comment. Maybe there's some kind of meaning in all this. Let's begin and see what can be learned!